Ashes

ASHES. To repent in Sackcloth and Ashes; to afflict ourselves for our sins, or for some misfortune, and to sit upon some coarse Stuff, or in Ashes, are all Expressions Gen. xviii. 27.very common in Scripture. I am but Dust and Ashes, said Abraham to the Lord. God threatens his people with showering down Dust and Ashes upon their lands, instead of Deut. xxviii. 24.Rain, so to make them barren, instead of blessing them with fertility; to dry them up more and more, instead of moistening them. Tamar, after the injury received from her Brother Amnon, covered her head 2 Sam. xiii. 19. Ps. cii. 9.with Ashes. The Psalmist in great sorrow says, that he had eaten Ashes as it were bread; this is an Hyperbole. He sat on Ashes, he threw Ashes on his head; his food, his bread was spoiled with the Ashes wherewith he was covered. Jeremiah, in Lam. iii. 16. Job xxxiv. 15. Numb. xix. 17.his Lamentations, introduces Jerusalem saying that the Lord had fed her with Ashes. And Job declares, that Man who is but Dust and Ashes, shall turn again to Dust.

There was a sort of lye and lustral water, made with the Ashes of an Heifer, sacrificed upon the great day of expiation, the Ashes whereof were distributed to the people; and this water was used in purifications, as often as any one touched a dead body, or was present at funerals.

The ancient Persians had a sort of punishment which consisted in executing certain great Criminals in Ashes. Thus the wicked Menelaus was dispatched, who was the cause of all the troubles 2 Macc. xiii. 5, 6.with which Judæa had been disquieted¹. He was thrown headlong from a Tower fifty cubits high, which was fill’d with Ashes to a particular height. The motion which the Criminal used to disengage himself from this place, plunged him still deeper into it; and this agitation was farther encreased by a wheel, which stirr’d the Ashes continually about him, till at last he was stifled. See the article Punishments.

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